Mints in Australia, and Prices of Gold. (From the Examiner, March 12.)

Daily Southern Cross, Volume X, Issue 642, 23 August 1853, Page 4

Mints in Australia, and Prices of Gold. (From the Examiner, March 12.)

In' treating the subject of gold and its prices, -we have given some reasons for thinking that little disturbance in the value of property is to be apprehended from the influx of the gold of California and Australia, far exceeding in amount, as without doubt it does, that which followed the conquests of Mexico and Peru. It seems to us desirable at the same-time, that we should facilitate and regulate as far as possible, the production of the precious metal in our own colony, and for this purpose, in addition to the rule 3 already in existence, and which seem to be of a wholesome character, we have no doubt of the expediency of establishing two mints—one at Sydney and one at Melbourne. On this subject, in answer to a question asked the other night in the House of Commons, Mr. James Wilson has made the following statement: — "The Government had come to the conclusion that the establishment of the mints in the Australian colonies was a question to be determined rather by those colonies than by the mother-country. The Government .were, however, disposed to afford every faci'3ity which the colonists might require for 5 that purpose. With regard to the places where they should be established, he might state that the only Australian colony which had demanded such a convenience, and had supplied a certain part of the necessary funds, was Sydney—£lo,ooo had been received thence, and was now being applied to the purpose. Government would be ready to grant a similar convenience to any other of the Australian colonies that desired it, and were ready to assume the whole charges, so that no part of the cost should fall on this country, and to conform to suet regulations as Government should lay down for securing the purity and proper quality of the coin." The greatest care will be necessary in applying this regulating power of Government. Such mints as those now proposed to be established, in our opinion ought j certainly not to receive gold at the arbitrary valuation of £3 17s. 10^d. an ounce, ; but should consider it merely as merchandise. For the purpose of a local currency a coin might be issued of the exact weight and standard of the sovereign, stamped on one side with characters, expressing such . weight and standard, with, perhaps, the ; royal arms on the reverse. For mercantile purposes, ingots might be coined, inscribed with characters expressing weight and fineness. The expense of coining might be defrayed by a small seigniorage not exceeding one-half per cent., which, more than com-; pensated as it would be by the certified' assay, would be no burthen to the owner.'. We have seen the annual produce of Aus-. tralia estimated no the spot, as high as £20,000,000 j but supposing only one-half of this to be brought to the Government, mintd, the seigniorage would come to \ £50,000 a year, a sum more than sufficient j to cover every^-charge of coinage. In 1850, the charges of our two Indian mints of Calcutta and Bombay amounted to £43,749, while the revenues were £64,386, and matters will assuredly be managed with more: economy in Australia than in India. We have now some additional illustrations to offer to the subject of former aFticles, in which we endeavoured to show that j the theory was a mistake which supposed that the value of the precious metals had j been depreciated, and that of all which they represented enhanced, by the influx of the gold and silver of America. We then demonstrated that no reliance whatever could | be placed on the quotations of the price of corn before the discovery; and in proof that gold had suffered no depreciation, we adduced the prices of wool and black pepper before and after it. Making however, due ] allowance for the peculiar character of j wheat, we think even this article itself may : be adduced as evidence of the same fact, • when the quotations are trustworthy. ! Pliny gives us the price of wheat in Rome in the first century of the Christain era, and this price reduced to English weight and money makes 30s. a quarter, a valuation •which satisfies the accurate and fastidious Gibbon. We shall compare with it the prices in England of the first ten years of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which were, for the first of thesa, on an average 375. Bd, and for the last 435. 2d. According to these figures, the English price of the first years of the seventeenth century, 3 hundred years after the discovery of America, was little more than 25 per cent, higher than the Roman above 1500 years before. But had the theoiy of the depreciation of gold been true, the actual enhancement ought to have been from 300 to 400 per cent., making the English price, not 375. Bd., but from 90s. to 120s. a quarter. Even comparing with the Roman price the authentic average of the first ten years of the eighteenth century, taken from the Eton accounts, the enhancement of price was little more than 35 per cent., instead of from three to four times that amount; while the two English prices compare with each other show an enhancement, in the last, of barely 12 per cent, in a whole century. The quotations we have given, however, require a few explanations. Rome had a free trade in corn, and circumstanced as Rome was she could not have lived for ten years without it. She was supplied not only by the surrounding territory, but from Lombardy, Tuscany, Sicily, Sardinia, Africa, Egypt, France, Greece, and Thrace. Most of these being situated on or about the shores of the Mediterranean, her supplies reached her by cheap and safe water communication while the market prices mast have been

lowered by the forced contributions for distributions to the Roman mob. We may here remark that the worst wheats brought into the Roman market were those of France and Thrace, owing to the coldness of their climates, and the barbarous nature of their husbandry. There was no English -wheat there ; and if there had been, it would unquestionably have stood, for the same reasons in an exaggerated degree, at the bottom of of the scale. The best wheat was that of Italy, and the Tuscan was more valuable than that of France by 30 per cent. After the Italian came in succession African, Egyptian, Sicilian and Sardinian wheats. The condition of England, at the two periods we have referred to, was very different from that of the Rome of Pliny. _It was, in both, an exporting, and not an importing country, and had to rely on itself only for its bread. Such a country, without good roads, internal water communication, or active coasting trade, must necessarily have been subject to violent fluctuations of price, such as would not exist in a country deriving its supplies from many foreign sources, as was the case with ancient Rome. Thus, in the first period often years, we find the price for 1602 as low as 20s. 4d., and in 1608, as high as 565. Bd. a quarter, or 94 per cent. more. In two years more we find it fallen to 355. lOd. Even in the ten first years of the authentic eighteenth century, we find the price of wheat as low as 265. in one year, and as high as 78s. 6d. in another, or no less than 266 per cent. more. At both the periods quoted, England may be said to have been pretty much in the same condition as are now Russia, Persia, India, and China; in which the abundance of one quarter cannot, for want of means, supply the dearth of another. The subject has been directly brought home to ourselves in our Indian empire, in which, during our century's rule, there have been many local dearths or famines in some parts, while there have been gluts in others.

Qoeen Victoria and the Slave Missionary. — The Rev. Samuel Crowther, a native of Yoruba, on the west coast of Africa, having been educated as a missionary, in connexion with the Church Missionary Society, at Sierra Leone, was ordained in 1843- He visited England in 1851, and had an interview on that occasion with Queen Victoria, the circumstances of which do honour alike to the African Missionary and the English Queen. The incident is related by a lady who had every means of knowing the truth, in a letter to a chaplain on the Bombay establishment : — "Mr. Growther was at a Church Missionary meeting at Windsor. After the meeting, Lord Wriothesly Russell (brother to Lord John, a pious clergyman and a member o.f the Evangelical Alliance), told him that her Majesty wished to see him at Windsor Castle. When at the palace, he met one of the ladies in waiting who was a collector for the Church Missionary Society, and who addressed herself to him as such, and as one deeply interested in the progress of the society, and anxious to shake hands with him as her brother in the Lord. He thea passed on to a room in which was Prince Albert, who immediately addressed him most kindly ; and they were deep in conversation on missionary subjects when a lady walked in and joined in the conversation. Mr. Crowther taking it for granted it was the lady he had.met in the antechamber before, took no particular notice of her, further than continuing the most earnest discourse, pointing out places on the map, describing the various stations, &c. At length Lord Russell said something apart to make Mr. Crowther aware that he was speaking to the Queen of England He was a good deal abashed, both at the presence of royalty and the honour conferred upon him. In the gentless, sweetest manner (like a roost loving mother to her people), her Majesty set him quite at ease, and continued her close inquiries on subjects connected with the Church Missionary Society, and Sierra Leone. They had not quite light enough at the table where the maps were spread out, and the Queen fetched a light from another table, which Mr. Crowther, turning over the leaves of the atlas, put out, to bis great distress : but the Queen (evidently not wishing the delay and interruption of calling a servant) immediately lighted it herself, and continued the conversation, asking many questions about African missions. My brother asked Mr. Crowther whatsort of questions the Queen asked. He replied, 'A lady; collector could not have asked closer questions on the spiritual wants of the people, and the working of the missions.' Her Majesty also inquired about the appointment of a bishop, and the suitableness of Mr. Vidal, recently nominated. In giving his very decided testimony to their need of an overseer, and the peculiar fitness of the bishop-designate, Mr. Crowther particularised his wonderful knowledge of languages, whereupon her Majesty tur'nedto the Prince and said with a smile, 'Ah, Albert, you see there are other good linguits besides Germans !' I need hardly say Mr. Crowther was much encouraged by this interview." — Nonconformist.

"The Galway Packet" gives the subjoined remarkable statement in reference to the progress of emigration from that quarter :—: — "The rush of emigration still continues unabated. Every American post brings its supply of remittances, upon the receipt of which crowds of emigrants hurry away, with scarce a moment's delay or preparation. In ordinary correspondence a communication by post does not receive a reply more generally than a letter from an Irish emigrant in America is followed by the im-

mediate departure of one, two, or three, or more of the relations at home. The peculiarity of this year's exodus, consists in this that those who compose it are not broken down tenants, terrified by the pressure of poor rate and the fears of a future famine, or driven to despair by the menaces of a harsh landlord, and the frightful visions of bailiffs and crowbars, who fly to emigration as their last desperate resource ; but they are all persons well enough to do in the world, whom the success of thoir friends in a strange land stimulates to follow them. If one may judge by the numerous instances which have come under our notice, the spell that bound the Irish peasant to his native soil is now broken, and he is as ready to break every tie which attached him to his home, and to go forth in search of adventure, as a Scotchman, or an Arab of the desert. A most remarkable instance of this change of feeling and of altered circumstances of emigration has been afforded this very day in an extensive migration ' which has taken place from the islands of Arran. Seven years ago, even while famine scared them from a wretched home, to part from their native islands would have been a second death to these primitive and secluded people. Now, when they are in comparative affluence, able to satisfy all their moderate wants in a home endeared by the regard of kindred, and hallowed by many sacred traditions a departure to a distant land causes them little or no emotion. To leave their friends at home and kindred here for ever, apparently gives them as Jittle concern as it would afforded them a few years ago to leave their isolated shores for a fair in Galway, where they possibly might be detained two or three days by some change in the weather. Some 30 or 40 of them who have left this town to-day for Liverpool, on their passage to America, seemed quite unconcerned at their expatriation. They were fine young men and women — admirable specimens of the Irish peasant before famine had bowed his frame or crushed his spirits."

News of the 19th April from the frontier of Poland state that, during the preceding week, the troops of the line stationed in the neighbourhood of Czenstochow had broken up their cantonments, and left by the railway for Warsaw. They were to proceed from Warsaw into Bussia, and take up their position on the Turkish frontier. Capital Port. — Frequently the bottled fluids vended at many of the watering-place hotels and inns contain not even one drop of the juice of the grape. Innumerable are the recipes in vogue among publicans of the lower class to enable them to defraud their too confiding customers. The following js one, which, according to Mr. Mitchell, is in considerable use for producing a "fine fruity port !"— "Damp on wine, 11 gallons ; brandy, 5 gallons ; cyder, 36 gallons ; elder wine, 11 gallons." — Neio Quarterly Review. All the G-old in the World.— Taking the cubic yard of gold (says the 'Illustrated News') at £2,000,000, which it is in round numbers, all the gold in the world at this estimate might, if melted into ingots, be contained in a cellar, twenty-four feet square and sixteen feet high. All our boasted wealth already obtained from California and Australia would go into an iron safe, nine feet square and nine feet high. So small is the cube of yellow metal that has set populations on the march, and roused the world to wonder.